24/7 startups, and unexpected pitfalls?

[oznl]

16 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

There is some lag to the process; you have to familiarize yourself with terms like "euvolemic" and hyper- and hypotonic, and isotonic, to try and discern what's going on, but basically, the kidneys do not allow for massive changes in the concentration of ions in your body fluids. Alcohol is a diuretic, but I also tend to eat salty foods when I drink.

If that wasn't an opportunity for me to hit Google I don't know what is.  Putting on my optimism glasses I've learned:

1. Beer is remarkably low in salt (So it's a health food!  Who knew?)

2. Just in case we over-do it with our low-salt/no-salt healthy-beer and risk messing with osmosis, those salty foods should give you the solutes your kidney craves (summary: The solution to too much beer is too many salted peanuts proving that there IS a god).

3. Salted peanuts and beer are as good a combo physiologically as they taste

I still haven't quite linked this back to why my 4 cans of Sunday night IPA rocket fuel disappear into hiding only to reemerge at the other end around Tuesday (I just can't fathom how I couldn't be taking enough compensatory salt onboard from somewhere) but I'll google some more 🤣

[Little Sherri]

I was buying no-slip slippers for an elderly relative, having become familiar with the technology while looking after my parents. They have the ability to yawn open to the point where the wearer is essentially plunking their feet down into an open vessel, rather than sliding or squeezing your foot into a shoe, and then the tongue gets overlapped by Velcro flaps on either side, making it easier to get them on and off, with minimal bending required, but at the same time, they're secure once they're on and not likely to trip up the person wearing them, who might then break a hip. 

I mention this because while I was in that store, I came across a bag of medium-sized Tranquility ATN diapers on a blow-out rack for half price. I currently have some large ATN's in my inventory, and use them as a light-duty plastic diaper for fill-in service between longer-shift products, or where a relatively thin plastic diaper is called for - for example, it would be something that I might wear for an MRI or a massage, where I don't relish the visible bulk of a better diaper under a hospital gown or under a towel, and where cartoon characters are not called for. Although I do hope that I can eventually get to a place where I'm comfortable enough to feel that whimsical diapers are just an aesthetic choice and not a lightning rod for judgement. I never worried about what anyone would think of my Homer Simpson-themed boxer shorts. But I digress. 

I looked at the sizing chart on the diapers, and it suggested that I did fall into the upper end of the range for the product, so I thought to myself, I might as well dollar-cost-average my "portfolio" downward a few decimals of a percentage point, and take them, for $1 a diaper, even thought they might not be the most versatile tool in my arsenal. 

Putting them on and then wearing them for a few hours provided an unexpectedly nostalgic experience, even if they were nearly useless on me, and one leaked catastrophically less than an hour into its shift. Adult diapers almost never reference weight, going strictly by waist size for the most part, or also offering hip guidelines, on some products. Children's diapers, on the other hand, are pretty much always categorized by weight, and there is a major philosophical difference between the two approaches, in my experience. Adult diaper manufacturers are often slightly to wildly optimistic about what sizes their products will accommodate, and, absolutely hyperbolic about fluidic capacity, whereas children's diapers (and pull-ups) are typically underrated in terms of sizing, and they almost never mention capacity in any way, other than to maybe say that the product can provide "up to" 12 hours of protection. 

So, size 7 and 8 diapers that are rated to 42 or 46 lbs, can accommodate waist sizes that line up with the average 7-10 year-old form, even though 7-10 year-olds typically weigh 60-80 lbs. 

All of this came together in my mind because squeezing myself into those overrated ATN's reminded me very much of wearing underrated Pampers as a kid. I could only land the upper tabs of the ATN's on the front of the diaper - there was no hope for the lower tabs, which effectively resulted in my wearing white plastic, single-tab diapers, where the tabs just landed on the very edges of the front of the diaper, and only with some stretching. ATN's have the tab-on-a-tab system employed by BetterDry, for example, rather than a reinforced landing zone, so at least I didn't have to worry about making it to the runway - all I needed was an inch of plastic on each side. But you do have to worry about overwhelming the adhesive attraction between the lower and the "second chance" upper tab sandwich, and that did happen to me, necessitating a repair with white glossy hockey tape.

This was also something that happened on occasion as a child, when the tab on one side or the other would blow off, often when I was wearing the diaper while roughhousing with my brother in the winddown period to bedtime, as we watched Knight Rider or The A-Team in the living room, for example. My mom would just slap a piece of Scotch tape as a bridge from the back to the front, leaving me feeling very much like I was wearing a white plastic bikini, which was exactly how I looked in the ATN's this weekend. 

Those XL Pampers from back in the mid-to-late 1980's, as far as I recall, were rated for 20-35 lb "babies", yet I was squeezing into them when I weighed close to twice that. However, they had incredible capacity. I don't have any hard statistics, and obviously, memory is a strange thing, but, I only recall washing my bedding because of a diaper leak, very intermittently - usually my sheets just got washed on whatever schedule my mom employed for that, and tiny leaks or leg-gather wicking incidents (which sometimes happened underneath me when I sat on the edge of my bunk bed with my legs dangling down, a vantage point I enjoyed) weren't usually significant enough to trigger a bed stripping - they'd just dry up and then the bedding would get washed on Sunday or whenever - I really don't recall. Those were background processes, like shopping for milk, that just happened around me, unnoted for the most part. Only when a diaper really failed, such as if I peed up over the front and soaked my shirt and my sheets, did an off-schedule bed refresh occur.

So, there you have it - an overrated and undersized adult diaper managed to transport me back to wearing underrated and oversized toddler diapers. 

[Little Sherri]

I decided to copy the following over from another thread, because I was once again summarizing my "origin story" for the resurrection of a thread from 2020 that had new life breathed into it, about how we came across our unusual fascination with babies' underpants, when I had a bit of an epiphany regarding what might have kicked "this" off, in addition to being a chronic and accomplished bedwetter as a kid. I think I may have delved a little into this before, but as I hurdle towards my 5 year "diaperversary", perhaps I have worded more succinctly here, than I did in previous go arounds. The epiphany centers on the fact that I was likely being potty trained, just around when my little brother was born:

 

It's been interesting reading through this resurrection of an older thread!

I knew that I loved diapers before I knew that I loved diapers, because "this" has been part of me from my earliest memories. Dabbling in armchair developmental psychology, if I had to speculate, I would say that the origins of my fascination with wearing plastic baby pants probably stem from being potty trained when my younger brother was an infant - he was born right around when I was going through that process. I have zero recollection of this, of course, but it is probable that I was being weaned off of wearing diapers, just as the new arrival came into the house, and obviously took up a lot of my parents' attentional bandwidth (as babies do). It's not hard to imagine the scenario - I was put on the fast track out of babyhood because they had a demanding new customer to deal with, and I probably noted what felt, at the time, like a decline in attention or positive feedback, coupled with added expectations. Meanwhile, the new guy had zero responsibilities, got nothing but glowing reports, and of course, he spent his days laying around the house, swaddled in Pampers. 

Meanwhile, nobody knew it yet, but I was on track towards becoming a champion bedwetter. I mastered daytime potty training on a normal schedule, but could not stay dry overnight. Fast-forward another three years, and the situation went from "He's taking his time figuring out staying dry overnight" to "Evidently, this is an issue." When my younger brother did not struggle with bedwetting, my situation came into sharp relief - they were putting him to bed at 3 years old in his "big boy underwear", while I was still being put in Pampers at age 6. Once I was the only person in the house whose underpants still came in boxes of 30, the campaign to get me out of them went into high gear, with dry night sticker charts and ticker-tape celebrations, and waking up to go pee in the middle of the night and no drinks after dinner, but to no avail - it would take another 4.5 years, roughly, before I could stay dry for more than a couple of nights in a row. 

Now, some of you may be thinking, "Imagine that, the kid who secretly liked wearing diapers kept wetting the bed... clever boy!", but, I have zero recollection of ever contriving to wet the bed deliberately, in order to stay in diapers. As much as I secretly loved wearing them, I also wanted my parents to be proud of me, and I was paralyzed with anxiety over the idea that my friends, cousins, or anyone, would find out that my I still wore taped-on underpants to bed when I was 7,8,9, & 10. One of my eternal regrets is that I didn't think of doing exactly that, when I finally did outgrow bedwetting, because it took me about a month to realize that no longer having a supply chain for "legitimately sourced" babies' underpants had created a major hole in my life and in my psyche. Ergo, I started manufacturing my own, using safety pins and pillow cases and towels and cut up plastic bags, by the time I was 11. 

However, as much as I finally confirmed, with no uncertainty, that I had a weird attraction to diapers, when I started getting up in the middle of the night to handcraft my own, I already basically knew that, because I'd had an instinct for as long as I could remember, that the expectation was for me to not be enjoying wearing them to bed as non-toddler, to the point that I pantomimed resistance at times, but, here's the thing - most of the time, I actually wanted to wear them. With the exception of whenever anyone outside of my immediate family was around. Then, they were a source of tremendous anxiety. Plus, I was fascinated by anyone else who wore diapers, and I used to steal any that I could get my hands on, even though I had my own. I was friends with a little girl when I was 5-8 years old roughly, whom my parents called my first crush, who wore diapers - that's what inspired my pen name on this site. I was absolutely riveted by her, whenever she was around, even though, logically, a kid knotted up with anxiety over anyone discovering that he wore diapers to bed should have been trying to put miles of daylight between himself, and the strange little girl that everyone knew wore diapers. But I used to follow her around like a puppy on a leash, because part of me wanted to be her, while part of me wanted what every other kid wants - to grow up and be considered "big" and for their parents to be proud of them, etc. 

It's a rich tapestry, this! Now, here I am, four decades later, sitting in my office in a big white plastic diaper, writing about them with a cadre of like-minded individuals, which in itself is a paradigm shift akin to the invention of electricity for me, because I spent more than three decades firm in the belief that I was alone on this island, a population of one. 

[superabsorbantpolymer]

I don't have younger siblings so I don't have the same cause, but I do remember having an accident at preschool and getting changed in a back room where it turned out they had diapers for the kids who weren't pottybtrain yet. That was mind blowing, I guess my mom told me I had to be out of diapers if I wanted to go to preschool. Being a naive 3/4 year old I believed her.

[Little Sherri]

I had a diaper dream in the wee hours of the morning, this morning, and it was a strange one, although not at all unpleasant. First of all, I have been having more, or at least recalling more, fleeting diaper dreams lately, and what sets these apart from most of the ones I have had in the past is that in those dreams, being in a diaper featured heavily, whereas in the dreams I am referencing here, being in a diaper was incidental. Although, still obviously notable, because presumably, I was wearing socks in those dreams, too, but, I wasn't aware of it, whereas I was aware that I was diapered. But in these dreams, other weird stuff is going on - dream hocus pocus, world building, problem solving, and at some point I see or feel my diaper, but I'm not distressed about it at all.

In one dream, I was in a room full of people, and we seemed to be working on a project, something involving a terrarium and whatever was going on inside it - maybe we were trying to get lizards to mate. In the narrative as I understand it, we were all working together, however I was walking around in a shirt and a diaper, and it wasn't notable to anyone, including myself, and was totally secondary to the fascinating stuff we were doing, which was the primary focus of my mind's eye. 

However, in the dream from this morning, I found myself lying on my back, on a bed, next to a young baby - an infant, who was also on his back. The baby was a boy, and he was brown in colour, although of no specific race. He was wearing a white onesie, and I turned my head just as he turned his, and I locked eyes with him, and he smiled at me, and it was heart-melting, as baby smiles often are, and I smiled back, and then I said to someone in the room, "You have a lovely baby", and this person, a woman with a slight accent, said "Thank you, yes he is." And I continued to look at the baby and he looked around and then looked back at me, as babies do. Then, it dawned on me that both he and I were there for diaper changes. This lady, whose image is fuzzy to me, was changing the baby's diaper, and I was lying there, also in a diaper, although the physics of all this is a bit nonsensical, because he and I were face to face, both lying perpendicular to the bed, but obviously, he'd have been about 50 inches shorter than me, in real life, so how his mom or whomever she was, was standing and tending to him, while I was also laying on the bed, face to face with him, does not compute, unless the bed had an extension on my side like a chaise lounge, or was L-shaped or something. 

Regardless, I was apparently awaiting my turn to be changed, but not by this lady - I had no expectation that she was going to undertake the operation. I remember thinking to myself, well this is funny, isn't it, that both this baby and I are wearing a white onesie and a white diaper... and then I woke up because my dog nudged my face with his cold, wet nose. 

I've not dreamt about anyone changing me for a LONG time - I have a recollection of a vivid childhood dream where I woke up late for school and was whisked out of my room by my parents and thrown into the car immediately - which even then, did not check out, because my parents almost never drove me to school - and then all of a sudden I was in class, but still wearing my pajamas, and I knew I still had a diaper on, and somehow the teacher knew, and she took me into a back room that my real classroom did not have, and said she was going to change my diaper, and I said something like "It doesn't need to be changed! I just need to take it off..." and that's all I recall. It's burned into my brain because it was probably the only diaper dream I ever had as a kid, or, it's the only one that made any impression on me - because it was a nightmare, essentially. I did NOT want my teacher to change me. So it's in there with a dream I had when I was young about a roller coaster that went off the tracks, and one about falling off of a roof, both of which left me awake, with a scream frozen in my throat. 

From then to now, though, I have not had a dream where someone was going to change me, or did change me. Nor have I been changed by anyone, in real life, for that matter, since I was of a single digit age. But this dream was not at all unpleasant - the lady changing the baby seemed very nice, given the oddness of my presence there. I was somewhat irritated that the dog yanked me out of that world - I wanted to see what was going to happen next. Stupid dog. 

[Little Sherri]

I'm still mulling over yesterday's diaper dream, because it was so weird. I didn't have one last night, by the way. I'm trying to figure out whose baby that was; I have friends of South Asian descent, but none of them have kids that young. Ahh, the mysterious machinations of the subconscious. 

Less mysterious would be the status of a Rearz Daydreamer diaper, with it's close-to transparent cover, and that came into play last night. My family is back, by the way, and regarding that, I'm glad they're back - the dog is good company, but he's not much of a conversationalist, mostly making exclamations that are fairly repetitive. In the before-times, I would have been both looking forward to having my housemates back, and, slightly depressed about packing away all my baby pants and donning the boxer shorts of sadness and responsibility, whereas now, I didn't give my underpants a second thought. Which perhaps I should have, at least yesterday.

I was washing dishes and streaming a TV show I don't often get to watch, it being unpopular with the females I reside with, and thinking to myself, I should go take a shower and get changed, before they get back, and there is a press for our shower stall, which is more popular than the one in the kids' bathroom, because it's roomier and the water sprinkles gently from overhead in a rain-like pattern, rather than attacking you from the side in a pressure-washed-in-prison pattern. 

But I got caught up in finishing the episode, and then they were coming through the door, and then my daughter had priority for the shower, as she's the one with a bedtime. Once she was done in the bathroom and off to bed, it was like an hour later, and the Day Dreamer I was in was very, very wet, although still holding and still largely comfortable. But, I was getting into the "I've been in this thing for 15 hours" zone where I'm just tired of being damp, so I wanted a shower and a fresh nappy. My wife went down to the kitchen, and I thought, now's a good time, so I stripped down to my diaper to prepare to get showered, but then I caused a chain reaction accident on the floor when I kicked the dog's bed and it nudged his water bowl, and a bunch of water sloshed out and onto the hardwood. SO, I went to get paper towels from the cabinet... and found the roll missing. However, I knew there was another one in our linen closet, so I left the confines of our room to get it... and ran into my wife, coming back with a beverage. 

Her, with deep sarcasm evident: "Nice outfit, I kind of missed being confronted by a man in a soaked diaper while I was away..."

What could I say? The Day Dreamer was undeniably sagging, but, much more than this, it was inarguably yellow, practically from stem to stern, in the areas that weren't tinted iridescent pink or blue. I don't know if these things integrate a wetness indicator or not, but they definitely don't need one, anymore than an aquarium does. You can tell when there is fluid in there. 

I then had to go back into our room, thusly attired, with the paper towel I had retrieved... and start cleaning liquid from the floor.

"What happened there?"

"Nudged the dog's bowl."

"You're sure?"

"Well, it's entirely around the dog's bowl, do you have another theory?"

"Just checking." 

(Squelch squelch squelch... the sound of me walking around the room...) 

If I had to bed, I would say that the stuffing in a Day Dreamer is exactly the same as the stuffing in every other diaper Rearz makes, varying by the amount the put in, and maybe, the SAP to pulp ratio, but it has to be the same stuff, more or less, you'd think. However, the Day Dreamer I had on did a really good job of wicking out from the blast zone. It was wet really high up the back by the time it hit the floor, and almost had a cloth diaper "enveloped in a uniform cloud of moisture" feel to it. And, it didn't leak, which suggests that fluid had moved up in the queue to other areas, leaving room behind it. I didn't mind how it felt at all, until maybe the last hour, when I had had enough. Comfy diaper - if you haven't tried one, I recommend you do. Just not in front of anyone whose judgements you are concerned with. 

[oznl]

5 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

 Comfy diaper - if you haven't tried one, I recommend you do. Just not in front of anyone whose judgements you are concerned with. 

Our friendly but limited-and-oh-so-expensive Australian Rearz distributor has some of these that have come in.  They are only in odd sizes and no cases available (probably just container-stuffing to finish a load rather than any specific stocking strategy).

They are however an accident-inducing AUD65 per pack of 12. This works out at AUD5.42 per unit or around CAD4.84 thanks to the recent fiscal submergence of our South Pacific Peso.

At that price, peeing in one of them would be considered a financial disaster.

Disturbingly, some "BeDry" nights also showed up, at similar blistering prices.  Slightly better than the "Daydreamer", they are merely AUD5.12/CAD4.58 per unit.

I'm curious to see how much "Australia Tax" these have been loaded with.

[superabsorbantpolymer]

The bedry nights large are $4.34 AUD per unit by the case (without discounts) in the US direct from InContol. So not a huge Australia tax. They are very expensive. The regular bedry is only $2.83 AUD, a lot cheaper but still pricey enough.

[Little Sherri]

15 hours ago, oznl said:

I'm curious to see how much "Australia Tax" these have been loaded with.

BeDry Nights Large - $3.82 CAD per unit, $4.31 AUD, when bought by the case. That goes up by 12 cents if you move to the XL, which I probably would - I bought the large, but I'm right at the edge of that size. These conform to the new Rearz sizes where the larges have shrunk a bit and the XL's are no longer of bariatric proportions. Strangely, I can still wear a medium MegaMax, so I have three sizes in my pantheon - NorthShore medium/Rearz new large, Rearz old large/Rearz new XL, and then NorthShore Large/Rearz old XL, which go up to my diaphragm and the middle of my back. 

I had a couple of mildly notable experiences yesterday. First of all, speaking of the BeDry Night, I was wearing one under a onesie and jeans, when I found myself in the very strange position of being surrounded by floor-level, high-angle mirrors. We were in a store looking for shoes for my daughter, an excursion I would never have willingly accompanied, except that we were coming back from somewhere else, as a unit, and this stopover was on the way. They were changing up the decor in the store, and had left several ~7 foot mirrors lying on their sides propped up against the baseboards at 45 degree angles more or less. This was not to be their final resting places - the contractor had evidently run into a snag with hanging hardware and had abandoned the project until the next day.

I can see no other reason to lay out fragile mirrors in such a strange and vulnerable position in a public space... except to facilitate upskirt photography, and I did look around, half expecting to see a camera pointed at the mirrors, but none were obvious, and the only person working was a middle-aged female. If the place had been tended by a male of the species, my suspicions would have peaked. 

So while my wife and daughter looked at shoes... I looked at me. Both in mirrors hung on the walls, and, from that strange angle from the floor. From the direct, front-on or back-on perspective, with my overhanging jacket, oversized jeans, and general middle-aged puffiness, I did not get a "that guy is wearing a fairly compact but still heavy-duty overnight nappy" vibe. But viewed upwards from the floor at a 45-degree angle, yes, I could see the outline of my diaper, vaguely. 

Interestingly, I didn't care. I'm within 5 days of having been doing this for 5 years now. You can be a middle-aged, relatively healthy guy, and wear diapers, and be reasonably discreet about it, but not to the point of paranoia, and, life goes on. I'm sure, the odd time, someone has looked at me and thought "diaper." People like us, who have honed our high-resolution diaper radar skills, probably can pick it out with an even greater hit rate, although being spotted by a fellow diapernaut doesn't really worry me too much - I assume that they'd give me a fist bump if they could. But even if some stranger in a mall concludes "that guy's wearing a diaper", well, so what? That's going to be "end scene" on most such moments. 

That doesn't mean anyone should be stupid about abandoning modicums of discretion - having ones diapers sticking out all helter skelter rises to the level of "I think that weirdo intends for me to see this" and conscripts the innocent. But, 5-years-ago me could not have comprehended how not a big deal wearing diapers could be. 

On another note, I pulled into an LTC centre's parking area in order to turn around while searching for an address yesterday... and ended up briefly (pun there) pulled up in front of two hulking dumpsters, both with the lids propped open because they were bursting with large clear plastic bags laden with the white, beige and blue carcasses of hundreds and hundreds of diapers. This caused me to have two thoughts... first of all, although I sometimes feel pangs of guilt about the environmental impact of this hobby... well, ABDL people might make up, what, 1% of the population? 0.5%? Less? Whereas >50% of people are eventually going to end up being 85 or older (if you live in Canada, anyway), and about 21% (average between male and female) of them will experience some form of incontinence. SO, that's 10.5% of the population, or, for Canada, about 4.5 million people, a good proportion of whom will end up in disposable something-or-other, for part of their lives. 

SO, I am a drop in the ocean. 

That said, the engineering side of my brain asked what the heck we could do with all those diapers, besides burning them for heat or burying them for centuries in the ground. I know smarter people than me are already working on this, but in my head, I am designing a machine that will separate the shells from the stuffing, shunt them off for processing into bus shelter benches or something, and then the rest gets anaerobically composted for methane to generate power, and, a nutrient-rich soil additive. I'm looking for investors. 

 

[superabsorbantpolymer]

I had a similar experience recently, I was walking around **major liberal American city** and saw a used rearz barnyard on top of the garbage can this week. Nasty and definitely not something I approve of as a reasonably discreet 24/7 wearer. 

 

Regarding diaper waste. Some places burn diapers for energy. I remember seeing a video about a Japanese municipality that was doing just that with the huge amount of adult diapers the aging population was using.

[Little Sherri]

I had a busy weekend, running all over the place with various errands. I went through more than the usual number of diapers, just because I found myself in the position, a couple of times, of being faced with going out for an extended period of time, when I was in a diaper that was at 50% capacity and that I knew would need a change while I was on the move, if I didn't hit the reset button and start from scratch. I blame this at least partially on not drinking enough this weekend. Don't get me wrong - I had some pints and a couple of glasses of wine, but there were no marathon sessions because I generally had to drive or get up in the morning, whereby abandoning my car would have been inconvenient. 

SO, I'd go to bed in something bulky and around-the-house rated, like a Rearz Barnyard, for example. I can wear a Barnyard, if it's not too swollen, out and about for the purposes of, say, shopping or getting gas or walking the dog, but it's a bulky diaper to put on under my jeans if I'm wearing "I'm mildly paying attention to how I look in this" clothing, IE not very oversized, frumpy and overhanging gear. I put the Barnyard on when I got home, at say, 10 PM, then wore it overnight, and through the morning, before realizing I needed to leave at noon... but I hadn't really wet overnight so the diaper still had a few good hours left in it, but there was no way for me to comfortably access them. 

As much as I'm within a couple of days of having been at this for 5 years, I still don't do diaper changes when I'm away from the house very often. I tend to choose my diapers for maximum range, within the confines of manageable bulk, and then I generally either get back home within a few to several hours, or, I'm staying overnight somewhere, in which case I will end up in a private bathroom that qualifies as a home base, if not my actual home. I can count on two hands the number of times I've wrestled with a diaper in a public washroom in the last couple of years, and then deposited a bagged dead soldier either in my backpack, or, in a trash bin.

I did get a slightly wry, maybe-slightly-approving glance from my wife when I left the house with my new, very old diaper bag yesterday - I was going over to a friend's place to assist with a renovation, and I didn't know how long I'd be there, but I knew that I'd be in close quarters with him, so I wanted to be able to, first of all, wear less bulky diapers, and, second, plan to freshen them at some point if we went long. Ergo, I tossed a couple of Active Air diapers into the bag, alongside the staple Little Monsters and BeDry I have in there most days. I'd reloaded the diaper bag and then left it on the floor in the hall by the door, so I wouldn't forget it, but then I ended up getting my shoes on as she was getting hers on, to head out somewhere, so I ended up holding the door open for her, and locking it behind her, with my Jeep-branded diaper bag, a relic from when the kids were young, slung over my shoulder. I'm not sure if she actually expected me to use it or not, but it's more compact than my backpack, and occasionally, I want my backpack for other things, so leaving the diaper bag in my car doesn't leave me short a useful item. 

I had the thankfully-rare experience of having a pacifier go off for some reason, one of the nights this weekend, as well. My practice with them is to use them for a few days, rinsing them every morning, and then I put them in my "used paci" breathable bag, and when there are enough in there, I pull them apart and soak them in sanitizer and let them dry and then reassemble them, before putting them in my "clean paci" bag. By following that routine, they always smell daisy fresh, but Saturday night, I was falling asleep, and I kept getting whiff of something slightly earthy, to the point that I sniffed my pillows and blanket and even my shirt, but they all smelled vaguely like detergent. Then, my eyes fell to the pacifier dangling from my collar, so I pulled it up and bent the nipple back and gave it a good sniff. Yup - it smelled earthy, and slightly damp, like a cardboard box from a forgotten back corner of a basement, that has been sitting on concrete. I got up and went into the bathroom and pulled it apart, and sure enough, there was a ring of slime in there - evidently, I had perhaps tossed a used one into the new bag, or somehow missed processing it when I last did a cleaning cycle on them, something that I only really do about 3 times a year, because I have 25+ pacifiers in my inventory. 

I pulled it apart and soaked it in mouthwash, scrubbed it, rinsed it and put it back together, and then for the rest of the night, something smelled a little minty, but I may embark on my cleaning routine a bit early, and include the ones that are still in the "cleaned" pile, just to make sure I didn't miss any more, on my last time around. 

Thinking about this has inspired me to launch a survey on the topic.

[NickDL]

I’m reading this topic with interest. My first ever diapers arrived yesterday. I put one on straight away and I absolutely love them. Everything I hoped it would be. The feel of them is amazing.

I’m not sure where my journey is going to lead but the idea of wearing them 24/7 is really appealing to me, but this is still very early days. 

I have struggled to pee in them a little it just seems so counterintuitive, especially when led in bed.

I’m sat in work now and feel empty without them on already after only one day!! I’m not sure if that is just the initial excitement or whether this is something that is really going to develop into a full time lift style. It just feels so right! 

I do worry that once the seal is broken and wetting myself feels natural whilst walking round the house and lying in bed that I’ll lose control and become incontinent, but at the same time I’m excited about it.
 

 

[Little Sherri]

On 3/26/2024 at 4:37 AM, NickDL said:

I do worry that once the seal is broken and wetting myself feels natural whilst walking round the house and lying in bed that I’ll lose control and become incontinent, but at the same time I’m excited about it.

I'm not going to say that this can't happen, I'm just going to suggest that, based on my experience, it is a very gradual slope, and one that is grippy, rather than slippery - you have to walk down it, as it's not likely that you'll slide. 

That said, at the same time, 5 years in, I'm now physically uncomfortable without a diaper on after an hour or 90 minutes, and I'm psychologically uncomfortable within only a few minutes. I get out of the shower, and the first thing I want to do, before I shave or brush my teeth or anything else, is to put on diaper cream, and then a diaper. That's not because I'm afraid I'll leak all over the place, it's just because I prefer to be in them - I feel naked without them. Although my wife, to her misfortune, has seen me naked ten thousand times, if she were to knock on the bathroom door, because she needed her hairbrush or whatever, I would feel way more comfortable saying "come in" after I had my diaper on, which is sort of the inverse of where I was as a kid. As a kid, being seen in my diaper was "worse than naked", because being seen naked was embarrassing, but being seen in a diaper was humiliating. Where as now, being in a diaper is my comfort zone. Caveat emptor. 

And, I sometimes wet the bed.

Opening line: It Happened In The Night... Last Night. "It" was an absolute diaper drenching. I was (and am) high on cold medication, so that may have played a role. The night before, my body responded to the stimulant effects of the decongestant component by waking me up every hour or so - very inconvenient. Last night, I drank a bunch of water - staying hydrated helps with managing excretions (lovely word, that), and then I took an antihistamine with the cold & flu tablet, because of the drowsiness side-effect, which I hoped would offset the decongestant. I am aware that the nighttime formulations actually include an antihistamine, for this reason, but the dose is low. This may have to do with the fact that I am a practiced drinker - I am somewhat resistant to CNS depressants. I can drink two bottles of wine on a Saturday evening and still walk. SO, I increased the dose of the antihistamine, and voila, blissful sleep came to me last night... and then I woke up in a soaked Little Monster that had precipitated a damp spot on the sheets at my side, although I'm pretty sure the leak happened while I was on my back, because if I had been on my side, I would have been laying in a puddle, not a "spot". 

"Lucky" for me, my dog had chewed the corner of one of my Tranquility ATN diapers, so I now had the perfect use for it - rather than throwing off my usual schedule for the Little Monster, which was penciled in for a shift that would take me into the afternoon (assuming I didn't use it much overnight, which I usually don't), and binning the diaper for something new, I took the damaged ATN, cut a few slits in the cover, put it on, and then put the 50%+ expended Little Monster back on, and that is the rig I'm still waddling around in right now. It feels very bulky, and I am aware that making two unrelated products work together has the potential to create previously unheard of failure modes, but I'm home so I'm not exactly juggling grenades. SO far, so good - no leaks. 

Before I went to bed last night, I had a humorous interaction with my wife that caused her to use both the "D" and the "P" words... I was about to head into the bathroom to take the aforementioned cold medication, and had stepped around her, while she was putting something in her dresser, to enter the bathroom, which is on her side of the bed, when she said "Hold up there, diaper man, I need to use the washroom, I want to get to bed."

I said "I'll just be a second..."

To which she responded, "Use your Pampers! People who don't wear those get priority for the bathroom." 

It's hard to argue with that, although the bathroom is more than just a room that houses a toilet. 

[ppdude]

After reading about your paci cleaning adventures, I decided to pull my Rearz Safari paci apart. I had trouble using it as it irritated the mouth roof near the front teeth. It was easier than I thought. After taking off the handle, it pretty much came loose. The back came off easily, exposing the teat. It sat loosely on the guard and easily removed. I soaked it in mouthwash overnight. Putting it back together was not hard either. Now it's spring fresh, tasty, and I'll be danged, have been sucking on it all day. Wow. Thanks Little Sherri!!!

 

[Little Sherri]

Well, here I am. It's been 5 years since I put myself back in diapers. I never thought this crazy experiment would continue for so long. I'm wearing a slightly damp Rearz Little Splash and I'm about to embark on assembling a school project for my daughter, so I don't have much time to write right now, although I may come back to this later, depending on where the day takes me.

The main theme of this circus on wheels seems to be the exorcising (with is different from exercising... there has also been some of that) the shame and anxiety around wearing diapers, and around wanting to wear diapers, that was burned into me during my first childhood experience navigating the world from within disposable plastic underpants. It's been 5 years, and while this is still not "normal", it is at least possible, generally routine, and largely enjoyable. I'm amazed and humbled by the quiet acceptance I have been graced with, on the part of my friends and family who are at least somewhat in the know. I haven't gone out of my way to enlighten anyone, with the exception of my spouse, about the unusual nature of my foundation garments, but five years is a long time to do something all the time, everywhere, so the odds inevitably stack up for people you spend a lot of time with to possibly notice "something." Just as if I had been wearing a hair piece for the last five years, by now, a few people would probably know about it. So far, that hasn't changed anything that I can detect, in the quality of the relationships. Well, other than the occasional barbed comeback from my spouse, but she would be doing that anyway, just using other topics, were I not prone to wearing absurd underpants. 

I'm nowhere near having lost control of any functionality during the day - as I said elsewhere, this does not seem to be a slippery slope, at least for me, but more like one covered in grip tape, that you have to deliberately walk down. I do wet the bed sometimes - well, wet in bed, so that does seem to be a side effect of wearing diapers to bed every night for years, at least for me, although being that I was a bedwetter as a kid, I'm not sure how generalizable this experimental data is to the greater population. Caveat emptor. 

So how much longer will I be at this? Right now, I have no plans to change course. 

I also want to mention once again how much it has meant to me to be able to share this journey with all of you, and to interact with this community. I really think it has been a major boon to my mental health; for the first 3+ decades of my life, I thought I was the only member of my species, the one weird kid who didn't mind wearing diapers, doomed to walk the earth alone, at least as far as that aspect of my personality was concerned. Meeting and interacting with like-minded individuals, so many smart and interesting people, has bolstered my confidence more than my plastic underpants alone ever could. So thank you. 

[WBxx]

And I thank you for brightening my day with your adventures in plastic underpants.

[oznl]

6 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Well, here I am. It's been 5 years since I put myself back in diapers. I never thought this crazy experiment would continue for so long.

And now we are five.  Congratulations on your milestone, if “congratulations” is an appropriate grammatical interjection for what most of the world would consider a disastrous dysfunction 🤣

6 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

 I do wet the bed sometimes - well, wet in bed, so that does seem to be a side effect of wearing diapers to bed every night for years, at least for me, although being that I was a bedwetter as a kid, I'm not sure how generalizable this experimental data is to the greater population. Caveat emptor.

Greetings from the greater population.  I was NOT a bedwetter as a kid.  I was the complete opposite: trained out of night diapers before I was 30 months old.  I can only remember wetting the bed ONCE as a child and from the circumstantial evidence surrounding that memory fragment, I’d deduce I was not even 4 years old.  I was 100% dry at night beyond that.

Until I was 56.

I now “wet the bed” pretty regularly.  Lately I suspect more than I realise.  Same experience, same duration.  Caveat Emptor indeed.

[justforfun]

Congrats on the milestone, and thanks for sharing your very entertaining stories, which are always well written.  Here's to another five more soggy years, and many more.

[Little Sherri]

I just saw my in-laws headed towards their car on this Monday of the Easter weekend, carrying some plants in a box... a Rearz box. The markings on it were not obvious - it said "LM10" in black letters. I read that instantly as Rearz Lil' Monsters size large, but I am fluent in diaper hieroglyphs and they are not. Hopefully they don't decide to google it, although  googling LM10 appears to dredge up something about amplifiers, and not "Rearz giant toddler diapers for adults" or anything incriminating. If you google "Rearz LM10" you immediately land on their Lil' Monsters, but the box does not say Rearz anywhere on it. Maybe in really small print on the shipping label? 

This also raises the question of what's been done down in my basement storage facility... I didn't have an empty Rearz box kicking around. I did have a case of Lil' Monsters with one bag left in it, into which I'd also thrown the last bag from a case of their Lil' Splash diapers, which are basically identical but for the print, and which I evidently use in more or less equal proportions, so... if she harvested that box, where did those bags go? Are they just sitting on a shelf down there, two clear plastic monuments to the fact that someone in the household wears big printed diapers? Or did she stash them inside empty slots in other boxes? The mind boggles. I also recently did a consolidation exercise down there, because I took advantage of a Rearz sale to grab a couple of things, so it's not like there were several 1/3 or 2/3 empty boxes to choose from. Hmmm...

Speaking of Rearz, apparently they've launched a new "smart pacifier", a pacifier with Bluetooth capability that you can link to your phone, if you want an app to be able to track your suckling in real time. Jokes aside, it purports to be able to provide you with data on how you are sleeping, as with the smart watches and such, and, the YouTube video they put out on it also says that the pacifier can be a fitness tracker. That, I found interesting... if you have a home gym, I guess it could work, although I've yet to pair a pacifier with a workout. I'd be concerned about biting through it while lifting weights, or, feeling like it impeded my breathing, if I were running, but maybe those are non-issues - I wouldn't know because I haven't really tried it. It would be cool, in a fantasy land, to wear a pacifier to a gym, and say "Oh, it's a fitness tracker and it optimizes my airway!" in response to the perplexed glances I'm sure I'd get. 

Will this mean that you have to put them separately into luggage trays for the X-ray scanners when passing through the TSA at the airport? "People, please put laptops, large electronic devices, and electronic pacifiers into their own trays with nothing on top of them..."

How long until a Bluetooth-enabled diaper hits the market? "Let me check my phone... hmmm, three bars left on my diaper, yup, I can wait until after we get back from lunch to change. I'm good to go...." 

[Little Sherri]

2 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Speaking of Rearz, apparently they've launched a new "smart pacifier", a pacifier with Bluetooth capability that you can link to your phone, if you want an app to be able to track your suckling in real time. Jokes aside, it purports to be able to provide you with data on how you are sleeping, as with the smart watches and such, and, the YouTube video they put out on it also says that the pacifier can be a fitness tracker. That, I found interesting... if you have a home gym, I guess it could work, although I've yet to pair a pacifier with a workout. I'd be concerned about biting through it while lifting weights, or, feeling like it impeded my breathing, if I were running, but maybe those are non-issues - I wouldn't know because I haven't really tried it. It would be cool, in a fantasy land, to wear a pacifier to a gym, and say "Oh, it's a fitness tracker and it optimizes my airway!" in response to the perplexed glances I'm sure I'd get. 

FYI, I'm pretty sure this was an April Fools gag on the part of Rearz, but I thought I'd pass it along...

[Little Sherri]

Tap tap tap... there it is, the Universe tapping me on the shoulder again. My wife has been streaming a show about a female standup comic from the 1950's, and the episode she was watching yesterday, while I was sitting on the bed in a Bambino Skooldoodle, centered on the main character doing a standup set for a room full of men, and she goes on to lob several one-liners about diaper cream, and diapers. "Blah blah, diaper cream..." (laughs) and "blah blah diaper cream" (laughs), she goes on and on, while I sat there reading the news, the air around me tinctured slightly with the scent of... my recently applied diaper cream. 

Other recent happenings... in what is clearly a warning shot from early-onset dementia, I peered into my diaper can in confusion, beholding at pair of socks sitting in there, atop a couple of fallen soldiers. I picked them up, turned them over in my hand... and then went to go look in the laundry basket, where I found a BeDry Night bundled up with my golf shirts, jeans and onesies. My process at the demarcation point where we transition into the winddown phase of the later evening is to take the dog out one last time for a (hopefully) quick pee, then follow him into our bedroom, close the door, and undress from whatever I'm wearing, depositing the pants either into the laundry, or into a basket on my side of the bed if they're fit for another day of active duty. If my current diaper needs to be changed, I pull a diaper out of my drawer, a sleeping shirt out of another drawer (I wear designated, older t-shirts to bed because they inevitably get stretched out), and then I go into the bathroom, bundle up the expired diaper, and take a shower, before putting on a new diaper, brushing my teeth, I clip a paci to my shirt, then I head to the closet, where I dump the diaper into the diaper can, and my onesie/t-shirt/socks etc into the laundry. Except this time I threw my socks in the diaper can and my diaper in the laundry. 

I had a "I'm pretty sure the person knows I wear diapers" moment on my front porch... the doorbell rang, and I was wearing a golf shirt overtop of track pants, in the kitchen getting lunch. My track pants were overtop of a diaper, of course. I looked out the kitchen window... and beheld a postal worker balancing a case of what could only be diapers on the railing, while already filling out one of those "we missed you" sticky slips to attach to my door, which would mean I'd have to drive into town to pick them up at the post office, the next day. He'd been there for seven seconds since the doorbell wrang, so was obviously in a hurry to get on with his day of not delivering packages to people, so that they could all converge on the post office the next day. 

SO, decision time... I would have no opportunity to pull jeans or something more substantial on, if I wanted my package of oversized baby pants right now, and not passed over the counter to me in a post office with several people standing around. I skidded over to the door and opened it, just as the guy was turning around to leave. He looked slightly disappointed. I signed for my case of big plastic baby pants, wearing, of course, big plastic baby pants. The box was anonymous but of a very identifiable shape, size and weight, for someone who does nothing but deliver packages, day in, day out, I would imagine. And I, myself, felt as though I had a fairly identifiable shape, size and weight... that of a guy wearing a diaper under light athletic pants. 

[WBxx]

Our postman, a good guy, has a game he likes to play.  Encountering me when delivering a package he’ll try to guess the contents.  Other day he held up a not that large opaque bag.  Turning it from side to side and squeezing he said “bra or knee pads, knowing you I’d say knee pads.”  Right, color?  “Black.”  Right again.  Thank my lucky stars diapers come via UPS or FedEx rather than parcel post.  If not I suppose I could claim they’re for the wife.  She’d appreciate that!

[Little Sherri]

My younger daughter and I were the victims of a rather hilarious verbal attack last night, although I think she was more insulted than I was. She was supposed to be getting ready for bed, although at this point her bedtime is rather fluid, and I will note here that when it suits my wife, she's more than happy to take a relaxed approach to this particular rule - if they're sitting in bed watching some female-oriented drama where everyone is either cheating on each other, or has cancer, or both, then if my daughter stays up an extra half hour, it's no big deal. 

But last night, my wife was tired because she had done a lot of driving (for her) during the day, so there was no TV viewing scheduled, and she'd asked my daughter to get ready for bed. I ended up engaged in a game with her where one of us hides somewhere close to where we know the other is about to appear, and then we jump out and yell "Boo" and try to scare the crap out of the other person. We do this all the time and laugh our butts off, but last night my wife was finding it irritating, even though we were playing out in the hall and our bedroom door was closed. 

After my daughter got me when I was coming up the stairs with the dog, she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, so I hid inside the doorway to the guest bedroom, and jumped out when she was coming up the hallway towards her bedroom, yelling the requisite "Boo!" and causing her to jump. She then attacked me physically, attempting to shove me back into the guest bedroom so that she could pull the door closed and then hold it shut (I know her tactics because they are my tactics). So, I was resisting being shoved into the bedroom, and both of us were laughing, which I guess had the dog, who was in our room with my wife, barking, because he wanted to get in on the action. 

So, my wife came shooting out the door of our bedroom, and yelled "APPARENTLY I'M SURROUNDED BY CHILDREN!"

My daughter said something like "Chill, mom, I'm going to bed in a second..."

And then my wife responded by pointing to her and then to me in succession, and saying "YOU"RE wearing a diaper, and YOU'RE wearing a diaper - I'm the only adult in this house right now, apparently, so I guess I have to be the heavy. GO TO BED!" 

Then she stomped away. This got both my eyes and my daughter's eyes wide, because my mother-in-law is staying with us and was somewhere in the house. Had she heard the exchange...? (One saving grace is that her hearing is not great...)

My daughter gave me an indignant under-her-breath "What the hell... anyway, I'm not wearing a diaper, it's a pull-up...", and then we disengaged and I followed her to her room to turn out the lights. I, of course, was wearing a diaper, although under my jeans, because I'd just come back in from walking the dog, but I didn't want it announced, like a toast at a wedding, to my mother-in-law...

[FretaBWet]

Maybe your wife was including her mother in the diaper wearing group and she was the only "adult" in the house. In that case her being crabby is probably understandable, adulting sucks but someone's gotta do it.

Hugs,

Freta

[Little Sherri]

24 minutes ago, FretaBWet said:

Maybe your wife was including her mother in the diaper wearing group

Her mom doesn't wear anything like that yet, as far as I know (not that I'd want to know), but my wife is always worried that she's going to fall or spill her tea walking up the stairs. Or cook. The worst outcome would be if her mother cooked something. But I digress - she was helping her mom with a passport application, so yes, she probably did feel like she was responsible for everyone.